Some Ideas on Education before Locke

Author(s): Constance I. Smith

Source: Journal of the History of Ideas , Jul. - Sep., 1962, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep.,
1962), pp. 403-406
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.com/stable/2708075

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 SOME IDEAS ON EDUCATION BEFORE LOCKE

BY CONSTANCE I. SMITH

One may say that in Locke's Some Thoughts Concerning Educatio

get for the first time (in English, at least) a sustained and unasham
fense of the proposition that a meticulous knowledge of books is sec
to a thorough knowledge of men" 1 and also a relation of teaching to
cine, but one should not overlook the fact that before Locke other me
ing in English had considered education-or learning-within the con
an understanding of men and of bodily health. Of course it is not su
that Locke stands in a line of educational writers oriented equally wi
towards a practical curriculum. I do not wish to dispute his status as
father of modern education in England. The point to be made is simp
in the XVIth and XVIIth centuries learning, Latin, and logic, togethe
poetry, were by certain other ripe minds scrutinized in their relation
body, to social behavior, and to a thorough knowledge of men.
The first name that I would cite is that of Roger Ascham (1515-1
His book, The Scholemaster, written in English, was published in 15
is a work of charm and good sense; it is humane, acute, steeped in t
of learning without countenancing for a moment the separation of th
the most worth-while activities of the wider world of man and man
comparison of his ideas on Euphues with Locke's general position re
an extremely interesting similarity. As Gregory Smith says "The not
Euphues, 'well-grown,' is not original with Ascham; it derives from
Aristotle, and especially Plutarch (Moralia, ed. Xylander, p. 81 D.), but
the credit for its more complete expression and its introduction to English
letters is undoubtedly Ascham's." 2
To juxtapose Locke and Ascham: The philosopher desires "a sound mind
in a sound body.... He whose mind directs not wisely will never take the
right way: and he whose body is crazy and feeble will never be able to ad-
vance in it" (Some Thoughts Concerning Education, 210). Ascham writes:
"Euphues is he that is apte by goodness of witte ... to learning, having all
other qualities of the mind and partes of the bodie, that must an other day
serue learning, not trobled, mangled and halfed, but sounde, whole, full and
hable to do their office." (Elizabethan Critical Essays, "The Scholemaster"
i.l.). Ascham enumerates the desirable characteristic of a healthy tongue,
"plaine and redie to deliver the meaning of the mind" (loc. cit., 1), a voice
"audible, strong and manlike," a face "faire and cumlie" (ibid.), a body
"taute and goodlie" (1-2), and he continues: "for surely a cumlie counte-
nance, with a goodlie stature, geueth credit to learning, and authoritie to the
person.... And how can a cumlie bodie be better employed to serve the
fairest exercise of Goddes greatest gifte and that is learning?" (2). Unlike
Locke he is not concerned with the means through which the comely body
may be attained but about its intimate connection with comeliness in

'See Patrick Romanell, "Locke's Aphorisms on Education and Health," this

Journal, XXII (Oct. 1961), 549.
2Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith, page XXXV.
403

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404 CONSTANCE I. SMITH

thought and word he is very sure. Men

holds, produce books of that nature; he in
contemned of wise men and after for
baptists, Friars, Monks" (ibid.). Further,
on manners and language or life in the w
praise of Cicero's style, and of Caesar's; b
quence, but what made for its developmen
but a social factor: they lived among
emonges the common people" (40). They
and also express themselves in a manner
Senators (ibid.). In the same manner ill-r
produces ill-thoughts and judgments, and
Learning, teaching, living, Ascham se
process; his notion of Euphues left its mar
influence of John Lyly (1553 or 1554-16
the way Ascham himself extends it beyon
social aspects of human experience.
A concern with manners, that is, hum
an importance equal to that of speech and
Puttenham (c. 1529-1600). His book The
lished anonymously in 1589. The author's
description of poetry for the profit and
class; that is, "Princes, Ladies of Honour,
(Elizabethan Essays; XI, 183), and to "info
of language and stile" (181), but his matt
men and manners; he sketches in effect a
from language to action he finds one fu
for speech, writing, and behavior alike; th
be observed in every man's action and beh
writing" (181). There is "the comeliness o
(ibid.). Comeliness, decency, decorum
Ascham's Euphues. The human body, the
the absurdities in the courtier's deportm
fashioned garments to disguise his body,
nances" (183) or the discretion, the judgm
by sequestering himself for a time from
and cleerer to discern the faction and stat
beside" (184); when Art should rule ove
Puttenham considers them all (op. cit.
them all to the corresponding faults or p
should know "where arte ought to appear
is more commendable than the artificiall
manship" (187). Finally, he establishes th
cal man and the artist with the words
utterance, and discourse, and persuasion,
vertues of a well constitute body and min
sensuall actions, saving that the one is pe
not without exercise and iteration?" (190

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 SOME IDEAS ON EDUCATION BEFORE LOCKE 405

If Puttenham is rather on the periphery of the theme o

Milton (1608-1674) is at its center. His pamphlet Of Educ
an open letter-one of several-to Samuel Hartlib who in 1642 had pub-
lished a book A Reformation of Schools. Milton says at the outset that "to
write now the reforming of education" is "one of the greatest and noblest
designs that can be thought upon . . . for the want thereof the nation per-
ishes." 3 In writing Of Education he had at heart the furtherance of the cause
of liberty and, with Milton, liberty, moral freedom, and their basis the love
and imitation of God were to be won through discipline. His educational
ideas, therefore, presuppose a considerable degree of mental athleticism and
staying power, both intellectual and bodily, in the pupils. But Milton is
practical too; his extremely lofty vision can take in the lower features of
the human creature and allot these their due proportion of care. Here it
is, on this level, that he approximates to Locke, and here it is that Euphues
reappears, highly idealistic but recognizable.
Briefly summarized Milton's reform of education is: seven or eight
years should not be spent in "scraping together so much miserable Latin
and Greek as might be learned . . . in one year" (321); the children should
be taught thoroughly and quickly out of one short book without any compos-
ing of verses or orations. Nor should these "young unmatriculated novices"
be presented at the start with logic and metaphysics, i.e. "ragged notions
and babblements" (322), whose pernicious effect on their future activities
of divinity, law, or state affairs Milton depicts in a rhetorical outburst
concluded with the words "These are the fruits of mis-spending our prime
youth at the schools and universities" (ibid.). In every city there should be
a house and grounds for one hundred and fifty persons. "This place should
be at once both school and university, not needing a remove to any other
house of scholarship," except for those who studied law or physics (323).
For "a complete and generous education" (323) the studies should be: gram-
mar, arithmetic, geometry, scripture, agriculture, geography, natural phi-
losophy, Greek, trigonometry, fortification, architecture, navigations, anat-
omy, physics, economics, politics, theology and church history, Greek
tragedy, the Italian tongue. And, says Milton, having marked out this
course in the order here given, lastly come poetry and logic. He judges, and
who can doubt the judgment, that after such a curriculum the pupils will
be "fraught with an universal insight into things," and passes serenely to
"seeing what exercises and recreations may best agree and become those
studies" (327). In his mention of 'physics' (medicine), he has already
indicated the value of the physician who by knowing tempers, humours,
seasons, "and how to manage a crudity" may help himself and his friends,
and may "save an army . . . and not let the healthy and stout bodies of
young men rot away" for want of medical discipline (325). He now goes
on to state fully the bodily side of his proposed institution of breeding.
About an hour and a half before their midday meal, the pupils shall have
exercise in the use of "their weapon" to keep them "healthy, nimble, strong,
and well in breath," to "make them grow large & tall . . . with a gallant and
fearless courage" (328). Lectures are to "make them of true fortitude and

3Milton's Prose Writings (Everyman edition), 319.

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 406 CONSTANCE I. SMITH

patience," and wrestling is to supplem

are to be followed by rest and now M
charmingly to produce the suggestion
ating and composing their travaile
harmonies of music.... The like also w
... to . . . send their minds back to st
(ibid.). Two hours before supper they
"military motions" of soldiership,
ture, however, is to be seen also as
environ for warlike exercises: "in t
is calm and pleasant, it were an injur
to go out and see her riches, and par
earth" (329). Therefore the pupils, af
their studies, may reduce these an
prudent and staid guides to all the qu
however, the enjoyment of natural ri
vation of "all places of strength, all
for towns and tillage, harbours, an
navy out at sea may be visited and
fight.
Thus compendiously educated, there would come into fashion again
"those old admired virtues and excellences"; embodying these, the young
men could go abroad "to enlarge experience and make wise observation"
and they would not return "transformed into mimics, apes and kekshose"
(ibid.). Milton concludes with the unassailable statement that this, "the
best and noblest way of education . . . is not a bow for every man to shoot
in that counts himself a teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to
those which Homer gave to Ulysses" (320).
Locke's teacher can be of a more ordinary construction but the philoso-
pher and the puritan share the same standard of "true fortitude" and "noble
and manly steadiness" (Locke, quoted by Romanell, loc. cit., 553), and for
both this is to be attained through a reformed education. Ascham, Putten-
ham, Milton, and Locke, whether directly or indirectly, contribute to
the end explicitly stated by Richard Mulcaster (?1530-1611), the title
of whose work, published in 1581, runs: "Positions wherein those primitive
circumstances be examined which are necessary for the training up of
children, either for skill in their booke or health in their bodie." It is the
view, no less cogent to-day, that education is concerned not with a mind,
nor a body, but with a whole man, and you cannot divide him.
Cranleigh, Surrey, England.

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